A buddy of mine was getting married on Orcas Island. First thing I said when he said he was getting married- COOL! I'll RIDE MY MOTORCYCLE!

edit: as I was putting this ride report together, yesterday, Chuck called! Out of the blue like if he was sick with ESP or something. And just now I remembered the fire on Orcas and the beer and good conversation.

When I pulled up at Chuck's botherer-in-law-to-be's house, just before dark, Chuck goes, "Is that Max? Max!" and he was already almost toasted. Which was good because it was a bachelor party. He introduced me to his extended list of friends- all of them totaly capable of being lunatics. One olympic swimmer. Several triathletes. All of them with master's degrees or PhDs or JDs or something I can't pronounce. I was their novelty, the guy who only had a bachelor's. They argued like old friends drinking beer- things like "He'll never make it to Alaska." "I bet he will." "He'll never even make it to Canada." "Of course he will. He made it here, didn't he?" "Yeah, but he totally wimped out in Mexico. He only made it a thousand miles in Mexico." "I'll bet you $100 he makes it to Alaska." "I'll bet you $100 he doesn't even make it to Canada." "Who's a witness?" Chuck goes "I heard it." So Dave and Todd made a bet. I sat there laughing. "I'm going to Alaska," I said. Some of them believed me. Some didn't. Well, Todd and Dave- here's your proof. Pay up! :end of edit.

I planned on taking my brand-new-to-me '96 R1100GS. But before I left I wanted to add a few things. So I took the bike apart and then I couldn't get it back together again.

I changed the plugs. I drained the battery down to nothing. I put in a new battery. I drained it down to nothing. I found the short and charged the battery and drained it down to nothing. I tried jumping it with my truck and almost blew everything up. Eventually I had it towed to the BMW dealer so that I could pay them $500 when I got back from Alaska. I'm too shy to say what I'd actually done that took them a week to diagnose.

In the end I took my '96 R1100RS. When I left I felt like a combination posseur/loser.

It was about 4 PM when I finally left, and I was running late by a day and a half. I had to get to Orcas Island by 6 on Thursday because Chuck was having a bachelor party.

The first night I made it from Madison to the border of Minnesota and South Dakota. I didn't ride anything special- just I90. But I ran into thunderstorms in Minnesotta and had to ride through them because out on the prairie there's no shelter. No overpasses. No exits with convenience stores. There was nothing to do but ride. The best part was when it started to hail.

Just inside Washington State coming up over a hill pulling away from everybody going about 90...

"Where are you headed in such a hurry? Do you know how fast you were going?" "I'm going to a bachelor party on Orcas Island and I need to make the ferry." So he said to hurry up and take a picture and make sure to stay in the commuter lanes. He even put his hand on his gun, gunslinger-style. I told him to smile for all the inmates on ADVrider.

p.s. does Wall Drug still have billboards right across the entire state of South Dakota along the interstate?

bananaman

10-23-2007 01:17 PM

There are Wall Drug signs everywhere. I had to go there to get a bumper sticker for my daughter. It went like this: Dad. IF you're going to be so stupid as to ride a motorcycle all the way to Washington, then you can get me a Wall Drug bumper sticker. So I did, and I had a grilled cheese sandwich, chocolate malt, and cup of coffee.

And I was on my RS. I had been debating with myself and a few buddies about which bike to take. The problem, as we saw it, was "getting to the fight ready to fight." From Madison to the Casier was FAR. If I took the GS- well, the GS was (is) a pig compared to the RS. In the end the GS wasn't an option because I couldn't get it started. I have no regrets for taking the RS. Actually I'm super glad I took the RS. It's absolutely amazing on the roads, and it handled the gravel and mud of the Casier and the Alcan and the Haul Road just fine.

Back to the pictures and the travel notebook:

"8:00 PM-8:20 PM 3.6 gal 57,447 Dodine MN. Suzy Q, coke, water, put on goretix cut it looks like rain!"
"9:30 Rochester, MN 1.8 gal 57,507 miles. Holy FUCK the sky is ominous. And I just rode through a BAD IDEA. I've beenhere at a Quick Trip maybe 20 minutes. I'm shoving off. But the lightning is scary."
"10:44 pm. Albert Lee 1.1 gal @$3.36 next stop: Sioux Falls, 175 miles from here."
"1:30 Am 30 miles east of Sioux Falls. Tired. Luverne, MN.
"6/27/07 7:25 AM Departing to West. 57,712 3.5 gal @ $11.52"
there are a bunch of boring entries, notes about various cokes and snickers I bought to sustain myself, then- "5:08 PM Sheridan, WY 58,339 2.3 gal @ 7.56 1042 total (odometer) 1026 total (GPS) 1013 from here per GPS." And next to me on a brand-new 1200RT- this guy pulled up. So I said to him- Hey Mister, do you know anything about the Iron Butt Club?" "Sure," he said. "Those guys are nuts," he said. "I just rode 1000 miles in 24 hours," I said. So he signed my log, gave me his name and number and stuff. Then I rode up to the airport and got one of the guys who works there to sign my log. He looked at me like I was NUTS. But I haven't submitted that ride to the IBA because after riding all the way to Alaska, riding 1000 miles in 24 hours just seems kind of... amateurish.

After hitting that milestone I was tired and I started to slow down.
"7:10 PM Little Bighorn Nat'l Cemetary 58,417 8:03 leaving Little Bighorn. Custer was small. I liked the horse cemetary."
more entries, then, "11:20 PM Livingston Montana 58,600 1304 on the trip 3.13 gal @ 7.66 almost (just missed) 2 mule deer- first a velvet buck walking slowly toward a doe, the, 20 mi later, a panicked doe, FUCK!"
"2:00 AM Butte, Montanta. TIRED, But... 1000 Odometer Miles! IRON!" But I guess I was too tired to have recorded the mileage- but my memory says I'd ridden 1000 miles since I got up that morning.
"6/28/07 8:55 AM Cantral. Overslept. Departing w/2.3 gal @ $7.33"
later, "1:00 PM Cor d'Alene, Idaho in 4 hours 292 mi."
and later... "5:28 PM 59,315." This was 2020 odometer miles in 48 hours. I was in the parking lot of the Sunset Elementary School , Bellevue, WA. Two women signed my log book. I'd just done 2020 odometer miles in 48 hours! (But after double-checking, it didn't add up to 2000 real miles, so no Extra-iron butt for me. It was hard, but not close enough for a cigar.)
"7:20 PM Seattle 59,369 traffic Jam on I5 headed to Hwy 20 between Arlington and North Marysville."

After riding 2000 miles through the American West it totally sucked to be in a traffic jam.

There were times in the mountains when I was laughing inside my helmet. I felt like the entire US Interstate Highway System was my personal playground. And there was no way I would have felt that way if I'd been on my GS. I sat in traffic and thought- holy shit, I just rode 2000 miles and it was AWESOME!

"8:20 PM FERRY TERMINAL Anacortes, WA."

bananaman

10-23-2007 02:39 PM

Orcas Island to Vancouver

Basically the wedding on Orcas was a three-day drunk. I won't bore anybody with the "wedding pictures," except for this one of the moon and then only because it was so unlikely. What happened was, one of Chuck's old girlfriends came to the party with a guy and his yacht, and after the party we partied on the yacht, and then there was a moon and I was drunk and so was everybody else so they said, "take a picture of the moon," and I did.

If you're ever in the area, spend some time at Doe Bay, Orcas Island.

When it finally came time to leave, after the wedding, I was kind of melancholy. I was looking forward to the ride, but it was hard to leave old friends.

But before I could go, I needed to make one more stop. I'd heard of Reuben from far, far away. I needed new tires. I didn't really want to go anywhere. I still had a hangover. So I stopped to visit Reuben.

I don't know exactly what Rubien did but it was like magic. Before, when I would start the motor, it would go "tick-tick-tick" for a few seconds. "The torques aren't right. This is real mechanic's work. Nobody wants to do it. You have to get the torques right," he said. Pretty soon I had a wrench and I was getting the torques wrong and he was yelling at me. "NO! What the fuck kind of pansy are you?! I said ONE CLICK! You went TWO!" and then he'd mutter stuff, pansy gay boy wants to be a rider gonna fuckin' get himself KILLED then, "GET OUT!" then "What the fuck are you going to help me or not?!" and when he was done with me and my bike I felt like we could go anywhere. Last thing he said: "Now listen to me boy. Those tires are sticky but right now they're new so you be careful for a while until they get sticky or you gonna get yourself killed." After, as I was leaving, some guy came in on a brand-new RT that he'd laid down or something. This RT guy was mad because Rubien was telling him it was going to be a couple of weeks before he could get to it. So the RT guy started to get mad and say things like Yeah but you took care of THAT guy right away! with one of those whine-y voices, and I heard Rubien said, "He's a rider," just to shut the RT guy up, and I almost start to ... you know how it is. I won't say. That sure was a nice compliment but not the kind I can handle in public.

Crossing the border was a total pain. They took me inside, asked me tons of questions, counted my money, took my bike apart- and then complained that it was "complicated." I don't know what they were looking for but all I had was bike stuff. They totally gave me a hard time and I was almost ready to tell them to fuck themselves and Canada and that I'd just take the ferry to Alaska. Eventually they let me go but they still kept looking at me like I was a terrorist or something. And they kept asking me what I planned to do if I saw a bear. WTF?

bananaman

10-23-2007 03:12 PM

Bc

"59,666/2370 6:48 AM Vancouver. Looks like rain. I'm kind of freaked out now. Long distances ahead. Will I have enough gas? Can I get to Fairbanks in 3 days?"
"10:51 AM Hope, BC 59,753/2557 8.9l @C$10.41"

Darn it. No camel back. Not only that, but when I stopped when I realized I'd lost my camel back, I dropped the bike. ouch. I put a nice gouge in the side of the fairing, broke the plastic cover on the cylinder head- it was a day when I probably shouldn't have been riding at all. I was scared- the way I've been scared a few time right before a deep and cold dive. But there were still people around and it wasn't THAT wild so I really had nothing to worry about, except huge trucks, deep ravines, snow-capped mountains that made me wonder if it might snow? Ach- just stupid worries.

So I stopped for cherries at a fruit stand. I was surprised that it was like a desert. I guess it's some kind of rain-shadow area.

That night, in Prince George, I started to feel better. I went to a walmart and bought some goop. I had some in my tool kit but it was burried somewhere and I didn't feel like digging it out. Goop was like $1.50 or something. I put some tape on the broken cover and then filled it with goop. Good quick-fix. I also got a 2.5 gallon gas can.

Then I cruised the main drag looking for a hotel. One had three sport-bikes- wait a sec, I thought. What the heck? I thought. Two sport-bikes and something out of Mad Max. Cool. So I checked in.

In my hotel room I put teflon tape around the threads of the gas can, and I covered the vent hole- already lined with teflon tape- with duct tape. I didn't want any leaks at all, and everyone knows that the machining on plastic gastank nozzles isn't like the machining on a BMW motorcycle. But if you add teflon tape, then it's equal.

The next morning I met Dave, Siggy, and Scott. It went like this: "What the heck is that?" "That's mine," Siggy said. "What is it?" "I built it out of spare parts," Siggy said. A little while later we wer having breakfast and talking routes. I said I was going up the Al-Can. Dave said he had a better way. He pulled out his map and then started to argue with Scott about how much better their way would be. They were going to Fairbanks and they were totally excited. They were arguing even though they were agreeing. "See these towns? Each one has gas," Scott said. "Are you sure?" I said. "Of course," Dave said. Siggy showed me his aux-bottles, spun aluminum bolted to the sides of his- whatever it was.

I did not know before we turned onto the Cassier that it even had a name. On my map it was 37 or 39 or something and I still think of it at "Hwy 37."

When I got the extra gas can I though it was overkill, extra, kind-of-silly. But it wasn't.

Somewhere before Belle II my gas light came on. Dave's and Siggy's and Scott's were on, too. There hadn't been any gas. It was more than 200 miles since we'd filled up. I knew I couldn't turn back and make it very far. We hadn't seen anybody else for at least an hour.

And me? I had the Deliverance song in my head. I was in the middle of nowhere with three complete strangers and I was going to run out of gas. I had two liters of white-gas, for my stove, but I'd never actually tried to run my motor with that stuff. Theoreticaly it would work, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my stove-fuel was from a northern Wisconsin walmart, circa AD2000.

I have never felt so free.

There was nothing to do, but ride. We rode easy- no more 85mph. We went steady at 50 mph. Easy. Gas lights on. Bear looking at us. Rain. Ghost towns with defunct gas stations.

And then, Belle II. We got gas and coffee and chocolate cake and life was good again.

But then it got really, really epic. Mud and snow, baby! When we pulled over because Siggy had to pee, all I could do was yell, "YEAH, BABY!" because of all the things I've ever done, I've never felt so completely insane. "Whatever you guys do, DO NOT TELL MY MOTHER I DID THIS," I said. I constantly felt like I was in an old TV show where they say "do not attempt this at home." Because after we got gas Siggy seemed to become possessed and he lead us 80mph in the mud and there were times when the mud and gravel were up to our rims.

Dave goes, "Sport bikes aren't supposed to do this but my fat rear wheel just floats."

(Note: I don't know why my camera labled these photos "7/05/07" because it was still July 4.)

I didn't get any photos of the snow or the rain. I could hardly see through my fogged-up face shield. It was a muddy face-shield too. But Siggy was going and Scott and Dave were going, so I went. I was at the edge of my ability and I kept laughing at my bike- AN RS! What was an RS doing out there, with a bunch of sport bikes?

Eventually it started to get dark, we were running out of gas, and we came to a town and I still don't know where it was. The gas station was closed for the night and there were no hotels. Somehow we found one that was closed- as in, OUT OF BUSINESS, but someone was there and they opened up a couple of rooms for us. Mine was full of kid's toys and it looked like whoever had lived there had left in a hurry.

But the night before we relaxed in a bar and had a few beers and a few really good burgers and life was good.

There was something else. Back in the truck stop where we'd turned onto the Cassier we saw a First Nation guy with his arm all torn up and his face looking beat. Siggy asked him what happened. He said he'd wrecked his bike. Then, that night in the bar with no name, in he walked! Hundreds of mile later. And he got himself a case of beer. Scott was totally pissed because he'd been trying to buy some of the same kind- something Canadian that I don't remember, but the bartender said they were out. And every First Nation guy that came in bought a case! Scott started to get really mad, but what could he do- we were the only four non-First Nation people around. The guy with the torn-up arm goes, "You travel far." Then, "I still have two hundred miles, and it's 20 mph." He was going to Telegraph or somewhere I didn't want to go. And then he left. With his beer. Not even Scott could say anything.

Between the town that I don't know and the end of the Cassier we had our first close call.

We'd cleared the mud and we were on an uphill paved but rolling from frost heaves. We took a sharp right, almost like a switch-back, and frost heaves were in exactly the wrong place. Scott went wide to the outside. I pushed and tried to stay in but the bike went up one of the frost heaves and kind of un-weighted and I couldn't hold the turn. Dave was right on my wheel- we usually rode with some space but suddenly he was there- and he went wide. I missed going off the road by maybe 6 inches and that last six almost killed me. Dave said he missed by 4. Siggy- Siggy had held the inside and didn't even notice. We were only going maybe 30 but if we'd lost the road, we'd have been fucked.

The day before, in the truck stop on the corner, someone said that they'd noticed a sign, "NOW LEAVING 911 SERVICE AREA." I told them about my EPIRB and showed them how to use it. Good idea, everyone said.

http://bananaman.smugmug.com/photos/211990016-L.jpg"7:00 PM Whtehorse 4002! 61298 8.65l @ $10.86" I was exhausted. Siggy wanted to buy a rain-suit. Dave and Scott kidded him about the rain being over. But it felt like it was going to get cold. Really cold. I wanted to keep going but Dave wanted a hotel with a hot tub. We stopped to make some phone calls and I fell asleep leaning on a garbage can. Nobody took a picture but if they had, I would have looked like a total bum, a drunk, some kind of mental case.

I tried to chat-up the receptionist at the hotel but she really wouldn't have anything to do with me. On the other hand, she gave some good advice. We asked her about the road to Dawson, and from there to Chicken. She said it was good. She said she does it every summer. She said she camps on it. "What about bears?" I asked. "Oh, I just take my shotgun," she said. Well, we didn't have shotguns, we said. "Oh," she said, and right there I lost. No shotgun? She looked at us like we were total idiots, loses, trouble-makers who would just need to get rescued. We decided not to ride to Dawson. It was an almost fatal mistake to NOT ride to Dawson. For Dave, anyway.

From Whitehorse to Fairbanks first we had cccccold. Siggy was glad for the rain suit. Construction along Lake Tulane (sp?) was brutal. Deep gravel. Guys on Harleys were hating it. I was hating it. All we could do was up-shift, shift our weight back, and hope.

We got to Fairbanks around 7 or 8 PM- I can't say for sure because I don't remember. And then we parted- Siggy, Dave, and Scott to the south, while I headed north to see how far I could go.

Back in Tok we'd run into some guys on big 1150 Adventures and they told us about the Haul road. One guy said he made it to Deadhorse in 10 hours from Fairbanks, but then flew a tire and had to wait a few days. That was all the Canadians needed to hear- no Deadhorse for their sport bikes. I wasn't set on Deadhorse, but I did want to take a good look at the road.

I ended up having to sleep on a loading dock while a thunderstorm washed the road away.

The next morning- as I heard the story first from Scott, then from Dave himself, a few weeks later- one tank south of Fairbanks, right after re-fueling, in a town- Dave was creamed by a kid in a truck. The kid didn't see him. Dave tried couldn't stop so he added power and turned away- tried to outrun the truck. And the kid never even slowed down, instead plowed right into him. Broke his femur, broke his right tib/fib, almost took his foot off, and broke his hand. Threw him into a sign, where he broke his other leg. Siggy and Scott right there. In a town- after the Cassier and thousands of miles, IN A TOWN. RVs stopped. An ambulance was there in minutes but they had no pain meds. Dave said he thought he'd die when they straightened his legs. Med-flight took off from Anchorage but had to turn back because of engine trouble. Dave in an ambulance back toward Fairbanks. Stopped at a town with a landing strip and put Dave on a turbo-prop. Dave with an embolism in his lung. Dave at the hospital in Fairbanks for a month. Dave at a hospital in Canada for two months. FUCK. Dave said he wished I was there with my beacon, but then he didn't need it because they were actually IN A TOWN!

Meanwhile, I was riding North. And it was raining worse than I've ever, ever seen it rain. Worse than Panama in the rainy season. People in the truck stop north of Fairbanks were saying, "there goes the road!"

The lack of night was messing with my internal clock. I knew I should rest, but all I wanted to do was RIDE. So after I woke up on the loading dock, I went, and a little while later, I met a lunatic. Gassing up his KTM on the side of the road. Looking like hell. Totally psyched.

"7/6/07 11:48 PM Fairbanks, AK 61,940/4644 2.64 gal @ $8.09 gonna eat, and shove-off at midnight, 7/7/07, for the Arctic Circle!"
"11:28 PM I didn't make it very far. It's a torrential down-pour- South American Style. Lightning and HOLY SHIT! And I'min a truck stop. If it's raining like this on the gravel road, then it's going to be gone."

This next part I'm not real proud of. I started to fall asleep. But I couldn't stop on account of BEARs. I was tired and not thinking straight but I didn't want to stop. The road was shit and I couldn't ride faster than about 20mph anyway. I started to nod off. I was actually nodding off as I crossed the Yukon. I crawled up to the propane tank in front of the restaurant and I slept on the grass. When I woke up, I saw anothe lunatic- name unknown- on a Buell. He said he took a spill north of Wiseman and broke his shift lever, had to have it welded in Prudhoe Bay. I was surprised how similar his Buell was to my RS.

This guy asked me if there were any more big hills ahead... and he said he wanted to ride to Ushuaia? I said, "No, this is the last one." A couple of days later, at Yukon River, one of them- the swiss one- was lurking around the cafe. I asked him where his buddies were. "I don't know," he said. He'd last seen them not long after I took his picture here. Teamwork?

So I rode into Wiseman, right? (Imagine I'm telling this story in a bar.) So I rode up to this cabin-place to ask someone about camping because I really wanted to camp up above the arctic circle. Out comes this guy. Tattoos, muscle shirt. I asked him about bear. "We had to shoot one that was old and there were two young ones fighting over a dead caribou but otherwise we haven't had any trouble," he goes. We kept talking and then I go, "Where are you from?" because I recognized his accent. Because he talks like me. "Wisconsin," he goes. So I looked at him a little closer. "Where in Wisconsin?" "West of Green Bay." "Not Poy Sippi?" "Borth." "BORTH?" and it turns out we went to school together! He goes, "Did you know John Rosenthal? You know he died." And I go, "Sure. His brother Gerald kept the front end of John's car in front of my barn for like two years." Which just goes to show you. And when I guessed Poy Sippi, I was close, because Scott went to middle school there. And we both went to high school in Berlin but then he moved. I remembered his name and he remembered mine but it wasn't like we were friends. But Borth- out in the country in Wisconsin, it goes Borth, Eureka, Berlin. I lived by Eureka. He lived by Borth. We didn't live more than 5 miles apart. And then, there we were, 5000 miles and 29 years later!

Eventualy I set up camp just south of there. Everyone walked around with their bear spray like if we were packing six-shooters. Scott- and everyone who lives there- actually does carry a gun all the time!

Also at this campground were a bunch of University of Alaska students who were studying permafrost. They invited me to go swimming (skinny dipping!) in the stream. Sorry- no pictures. The biggest problem was that this one girl wanted to sneak into my tent, but it never gets dark! No sneaking! We lamented this, and then we fell asleep in our own tents. Some people never went to sleep at all.

"3:20 PM 62,377/5081 Yukon. Got a little tired there... but not as bad as last time! 3.4 gal @ $12.65"

This is where I met two other lunatics. In the restaurant we shared a cup of coffee. They asked if I wanted to ride with them. I told them I was going slow. They were really energetic- still feeling the adrenaline from having made it to Deadhorse. They looked at my bike. I looked at theirs. We took a group picture with the Gophers I'd seen way back in Canada. (Sorry but I lost the original, accidentally copied over it. Oops.)

This bike had to spend a night in the woods. The rim was toast. The tire was junk. They took it to a turn-off, hid the valuables in the woods, and rode two-up the rest of the way out. Eventually they were able to get a truck and get back up there to fix the bike- with a tube. And then- lunatics proper- they rode the rest of the way to Texas with a tube and a bent rim! I'm glad I'm not them! And the moral to this part of Orcas to Alaska: if you're on a street bike, RIDE SLOW. Anyway- you get to see more than if you're bombing 85mph.

As for trying to fix this flat- first plugs, then off-with-the-tire, then getting the tire back on the rim... almost impossible, and it involved explosions and grease. Then, once the bead was set- the hole leaked. We all said FUCK!